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Photoblog of Joshua Christian Drewlow

Monthly Archives: January 2014

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Hello dear family and friends! This week was crazy pants!
Past crazy fast and was crazy awesome! 😀

Oh and from the head image you probably see, here is some snow coming down. Well, Snow is not the right word. First it was raining, even tough it was below zero. Over night everything froze and next morning was more like ice skating. A sister broke her back :/ Today the wind is blowing hard and it is snowing sugar or salt; small balls of ice.

I love the weather! It remembers me on the beautiful, snowing days in the Switzerland mountains, so I’m fine 😀

This last week we got a call from a member. A man asked the church for help, because he had a fire in his apartment. At the same day my companion headed over there and helped for two hours. They were very surprised 🙂 On the weekend we helped five more hours and had some great conversations about Ukraine in general, life, family and the word of wisdom (because we don’t drink alcohol, green or black tea, etc.) 🙂

On that same day, Saturday I was on the streets with an other Elder, visiting friends, that are interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Someday in the evening I took a great shot of a grandma, feeding cats in the neighbour hood 🙂

This week we again had a lunch with the whole branch. Ukrainians make the best food in the world! 😀

This week was so amazing! We are giving everything here, just to lift the people up here!
We had an amazing zone conference last week! With my companion we will write down the whole conference (we taped it) and if someone of you is interested, just let me now!

Hello dear family and friends!
Today we got a special permission to write you, just to tell you, that everything is ok with us. Yeah, we are still alive! 😀
You might heard, whats going on up there in Kiev. Crazy!
But that doens’t effect our mission work down here in Odessa at all! This week was probably the most amazing week I ever had in my life!

On Wednesday we had Zone conference and I met older friends 🙂

Yesterday I have been with an other Elder, having fun and just rocking (working really hard 😉 ) Odessa!

There is no reason to worry about us missionaries here. We are all safe. We all have a 72-hours kit (in case of a zombieattack), an amazing Missionpresident and a lot of angels that protect us!

Dear Family, dear friends
How I said, this year is amazing! Can you feel it? I do! This year great things will change! I just can feel it!

First things first: New record on the Potemkin stairs: 35x, 1x = up and down a 200 steps
😀
the last five times I was running for honoring all the amazing prophets in the Book of Mormon and all the people they gave their all mind, strength or life for this book!

This past week was amazing! We had an amazing combined (with missionaries from the other branch) district meeting and we just got more pumped, to do missionary work.
A short message with my dictaphone 🙂
[audio:http://blog.drewjosh.ch/wp-content/uploads/812_0311.mp3]

Here some pictures from our week

We had a three hour service, we helped cleaning the branch building 🙂

Beautiful sunset in Tairova (not center)

Potemkin stairs 🙂

right next to there, there is a Swiss bike shop! 😀

nice view from the top

some pictures from Center Odessa

The project was on Saturday, the rest of the picture were taken on Monday (our P-day) 🙂
That was one of our greatest pdays ever! On pday we prepare for the week, buy stuff, email or do some recreational stuff. In the Center we bought some cool stuff on the market and talked a lot with people there.

Have a great week my friends!

With love
Elder Drewlow

P.S. this following article was published in the Liahona a few weeks ago:

Dear Family and Friends <3
Welcome to 2014! This year will be a great and exciting! Honestly, I'm so happy, that it is the only year on my mission, without you. I really miss you so much! This will be great, when we will be together again and talking about life and stuff! 😀
This week went so fast, that I don't know where the time went. What I know, we gave our best. That makes me rejoicing 🙂 I want to share with you my insight about this wonderful principle I discovered the last few weeks. I discovered, that when I actually do and live what we talk about to the people here, that my joy increases to an infinite level. I'm telling you my friends, THIS IS CRAZY PANTS (I'm sorry, if I sound little bit Americanised, but the most of the missionaries here are from America)! That doesn't mean, that I didn't live after the principles of God before my mission. Preciously, before my mission I started to develop a desire, to live after the knowledge. I started to care more for my body and my spirit. I started to eat healthy, exercise more focused, stopped consuming time wasting entertainment and cared more for spiritual nourishment. Know I realize, what great blessing that is. Know I understand more and more, that we first have to understand something fully (that implies application in life also), before we can try to be better.
Question: How do we live after what we know?
Answer: Just do it! Start now! Don't wait! Set goals and start accomplishing them!
The great thing in "Just doing" is, that we immediately get rewarded. A discouraging fact might be, that the most time it doesn't look like, that we get rewarded, when we try to change for good. That's not true! Giving up something we like or stop a bad habit is painful and not easy. It doesn't receive itself (how you would say it in Russian, meaning it's not solved, done or accomplished) by a simple try. We have to try hard every day! On every try we do, every second, we spent trying to is worth it. Every time we try we grow a little bit. Every time we try, we change a little bit. At least there is one difference; we tried. I'm telling you my friends, why this is crazy pants! This process can give us incredible strong hope and faith that we get better. Perfect hope is not just a wish, that something might be. From the Holy Scriptures we know, that perfect hope is something, that surely will happen.
According this thoughts I want to share with one of my most favorite scriptures from the Book of Mormon:
Ether 12:4
"4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."
I love this verse so much, because it explains, how this process of "Just doing" gives us an anchor to our souls. It makes us strong, it makes us "sure and steadfast", that we "always abound in good works"! Are you getting it?! This is a circle! This is a never ending process! Everything that we do, for trying to be better, feeds our motivation (hope and faith) to be better!
Dear Friends, this is just the beginning... when we all understand this principle better and better, oh how great works we are going to do together?
here some pictures of this week 🙂
my wall

little piece of Switzerland <3

effective language study 😉

with my companion (hi says hi!):)

I was about to tape you something nice, but it didn’t receive itself! Next week! 😉

2014. Make it amazing!

With love
Elder Drewlow

PS: A friend sent me some nice pictures from Switzerland with beautiful landscapes with snow everywhere. This was amazing! I enjoyed every minute looking at them! You can be really proud there! I hope you enjoy it 🙂

Hello dear Friends!
I hope you all enjoy this special time around the new year change 🙂 Because we do! Sadly this message will be short, because I send greetings to family and friends!
Take care of yourselves and make the new year amazing! Set goals and accomplish them! 😉
We (my companion and me) wish you all the best in 2014!

Here some pictures from last week:
A delicious food called киш

random street picture

wuhuu bike 😀

the people here are all “practizing” for new year and firing much firework in the evening 😛

2014 will be amazing! I can feel it! Take some time for yourself and think about your family. That should be the most important part in your life 🙂